APS Audit problems persist

The Albuquerque Public Schools has been in business for more than a hundred years; since 1891.

They have had more than a hundred years to figure out spend public resources according to the rules.  A recent audit finds they have not.

KRQE was the first to report on the findings of the latest audit of the APS.

They began by excusing APS for losing more than a million dollars worth of public property (most of it stolen by APS employees according to the APS Police force and School Board Vice President Kathy Korte, link.)

According to KRQE, it really isn't the fault of APS leadership;

Albuquerque Public Schools has more than 140 schools, thousands of employees and $1 billion budget. Things are bound to go wrong -- and stuff is bound to go missing.

Did UNM loose a million dollars worth of computers last year?
Did Sandia Labs?  Did the City of Albuquerque?

On a more objective note, KRQE conceded;

The findings included a lack of enforcement for financial policies and problems with record-keeping.

KRQE argues on APS' behalf;

Still, $1.2 million (in missing capital assets) is an improvement over the $1.9 million in missing assets reported the year before.

KRQE then allowed their lawyer, School Board President Marty Esquivel to provide a statement.

"Overall we feel it was a very positive audit because the number and nature of adverse findings has continued to decrease over the years.

KRQE capped their defense of the leadership of the APS by pointing out for them;

The number of state audit findings has gone down over the years, from 378 in 2009 to 93 in 2013.

It begs a fair question; how long should it take to get it right?  Is a century really not long enough?  the two men most responsible for the audit findings take down nearly a half million dollars a year in salaries.  Are we not spending enough?

Recent audits of the leadership of the APS have found;

• administrative evaluations were subjective and unrelated to promotion or step-placement,
• a lack of standards,
• a lack of accountability to such standards as there are,
• a lack of sound record keeping, 
• data is being falsified (crime statistics)
• audit findings are routinely ignored , and there is
• a culture of fear of retaliation against whistleblowers.

Those are the conditions which lead to audit findings.

If you go looking on APS' award winning website, for audit findings (or the findings of any investigation of incompetence and corruption in the leadership of the APS) you will not find one; not one.  Despite all their assurances of transparency, despite their promise to post findings on their website, they are yet to post even one, link.

The findings are being hidden from public knowledge.  They are being hidden in an ongoing effort to cover up administrative and executive incompetence and corruption.

You can inspect those public records if you would like, but you will have to sue for them.  The litigation will be expensive and time consuming, and the leadership of the APS have all the time and all the money they could possibly ask for.

The leadership of the APS is being sued in federal court over their refusal to produce the findings of investigations of felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators and leadership of APS' police force, link.  Taxpayers are going to pay through the nose for APS' cost is no object legal defense and up to a hundred dollars a day for every day since they refused to produce them.

I waited to write this post because I wanted to include any audit findings coverage from KOAT, KOB or the Journal.  Neither KOAT nor KOB has covered the story.  The Journal did.

Managing Editor Kent Walz and the Journal, link, were quick to follow Esquivel's effort to draw eyes off the ball.  Instead of pointing to ongoing mismanagement, they point instead to "improvement"  in APS' efforts to manage its equipment.

Never mind how badly they're doing, they're getting better.

Never mind that after more than a century of efforts to establish honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, they still have not.  Focus instead on the fact that they're "getting better".

There are manifest standards and accountability issues in the leadership of the APS.  There is a need for a standards and accountability audit of the entire leadership of the APS; an independent impartial audit whose findings, all of them, will be made public.

There is an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

The Journal and the local NM Broadcasters Assoc affiliates; KRQE, KOAT and KOB relentlessly refuse to investigate and report upon ethics, standards, and accountability issues in the leadership of the APS.  Not even to report that there are none.

It's a cover up; pure and simple.




photos Mark Bralley]
Walz photo ched macquigg